The push to plant a Las Vegas-style casino on the Brooklyn beachfront has flatlined. After years of lobbying, backroom promises, and fierce neighborhood pushback, the $2.3 billion Coney Island casino project was dealt a fatal blow when four key elected officials votes no on the proposal, sinking the proposal 4-2.

Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, State Sen. Jessica Scarcella-Spanton, City Councilman Justin Brannan, and Assembly Member Alec Brook-Krasny delivered the political death sentence at Borough Hall, extinguishing the project developers had billed as a transformative economic engine. The unified front ensures the proposal will not survive NY States’s approval gauntlet.

The announcement caps a years-long knife fight that pitted a well-funded developer consortium led by Saratoga Casino Holdings against a scrappy coalition of grassroots groups. Faith leaders, environmental activists, and small business owners formed a loose but potent alliance—led by Brooklyn’s Sephardic Community Federation, which poured organizing muscle and credibility into the fight.

In a celebratory letter to its members, the federation hailed the decision as a validation of “tireless efforts” that escalated in recent months, crediting leaders Sam Sutton and Ronnie Tawil for steering the campaign.

The casino pitch—anchored by a 500-room hotel, 3,000 slot machines, and multiple entertainment venues—was sold as a shot of adrenaline for Coney Island’s aging amusement corridor. Backers promised thousands of jobs and new tax revenue. But critics branded it a predatory scheme that would fuel addiction, choke traffic, and crowd out families from the storied boardwalk.

For Albany and City Hall, the project’s demise underscores the perils of gambling expansion in downstate New York. A 2013 constitutional amendment opened the door to non-tribal casinos, but every downstate bid—Hudson Yards, Times Square, and now Coney Island—has run into ferocious opposition. Monday’s blow in Brooklyn could embolden anti-casino coalitions across the city.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)